Code is Poetry


morse code
Originally uploaded by jenny downing

If only code was poetry, I’d be the most prolific jibaro on the block right now with my acclimation to the WordPress interface and adding new bells and whistles to the website.

Some of the changes, messing with text layouts and adding the right amount of sidebar content, is a lot easier to do than others, like messing with the widget codes to appear exactly as I would like.  Sometimes I hunger for the days of coding out the HTML also entirely by hand and knowing the purpose behind all the lines of code.  I think that was my inner 12-year-old talking and remembering what it was like to put together a graphic display with BASIC on his shiny new Commodore VIC-20.  Yeah, those were the good old days of block text.

Today, all I need to do is drag-and-drop a widget here, mess with some settings there, and Poof! instant layout.  Clean, simple and leaving me no smarter than when I started.  So that’s what I really miss about knowing my website inside-and-out, even when there is a tiny mistake, one that I’m sure no one else can see, I know it can be fixed if I plug away at it hard enough.  With all this “easy” code, I have to wait for an upgrade to come along or just suck it.

I’m guessing I have the same mentality when it comes to some of the more difficult aspects of my writing life.  I’d rather tough out writing a review or putting together a deep lesson plan in favor of making things easier by looking at some pre-established models.  Same with manuscript revision, I’ve been stuck on a chronological layout of poems instead of seeing what makes the most sense thematically.   This is usually around the time I think I’ll go back to the drawing board and start all over but maybe the wiser move might be to just stop where I’m at and be honest about what is and isn’t working in the manuscript.  It would sure be quicker than going all the way back to square one.
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Of Cholas, Cupcakes and Cypher: Interview with Rachel McKibbens

Rachel McKibbens
Photo courtesy of Peter Dressel

Cypher Books only puts out a book or two a year and it was great to find out that the book for the second half of 2009 would be Rachel McKibbens’ debut collection since she is that rare poet who can win a slam (emphasis on win) with the same group of poems she just got published (emphasis on published) in a journal.

This e-interview was one of the most fun ones I’ve had putting together since Rachel keeps it honest, direct, visceral, artistic, gruesome and light-hearted all in the same breath.  No doubt you’ll find the same qualities in her first book, Pink Elephant, when it comes out in October.

INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL McKIBBENS (excerpt)

OB: Folks are quick to label your poetry under a couple of different banners: slam, performance, confessional, Def Poetry, raw, dark, literary. How would you define your poetics?

RM: I don’t think I can define my own poetics. My brain is all over the place. I’m writing sestinas about the female version of Pinnochio one day, then writing about the dead dog in my mother’s refrigerator the next. All of the words in your question can describe at least one of my poems, but none of these words can cover them all.

The complete interview is live at Letras Latinas.

Anticipating: Selected Poems/Poemas Selectos by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Selected_Poems_Baca
This book just shot to the top of my Must Have list. Probably the best thing I could say about Baca’s work is that Barb and I once traveled an hour-and-a-half to hear him read at Word Temple in Santa Rosa and (due to a family emergency) Jimmy had to cancel his appearance at the last minute.  At that point, I had never heard him read live so I was completely bummed out.  Luckily, host Katherine Hastings and another Word Temple regular decided they would proxy for Baca and delivered a great reading of his work.  A year later, I would finally get to hear Jimmy read in person and it was just as intense, lyrical and moving; a real testament to his ability to convey his presence through his text and his text amplifying his real-life persona.  It’s going to be great to have one collection that can sum up a part of that experience.

Champion of the International Poetry Slam, winner of the Before Columbus American Book Award, the International Hispanic Heritage Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the prestigious International Award, Jimmy Santiago Baca has been writing as a mestizo (part Native American, part Mexican) and an outsider ever since he learned to read and write — in English — during a six-year Federal prison sentence when he was in his twenties. Drawing on his rich ethnic heritage and his life growing up in poverty in the Southwestern United States, Baca has a created a body of work which speaks to the disenfranchised by drawing on his experiences as a prisoner, a father, a poet, and by reflecting on the lush, and sometimes stark, landscape of the Rio Grande valley.

In response to increased demand for Latino poetry in Spanish, and to thousands of Baca fans who are bilingual, this unique collection contains Spanish translations of Baca’s poetry selected from the volumes Martín and Mediations on the South Valley (1987), Black Mesa Poems (1989), Immigrants in Our Own Land (1990), Healing Earthquakes (2001), C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans (2002), Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande (2004), and Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande (2007).

Pre-order your copy here.

Acknowledgment: Poets and Artists (O&S, 2.6)

Many thanks to Didi Menendez for including my poetry in the Self-Portrait issue of the latest Poets and Artists.

I submitted “A Bodega on Anywhere Avenue” because it shows how I view myself in the line of Nuyorican Poetry, as an outsider following in the large footsteps of some legendary literary figures who in the final analysis are just street poets.  Elders on the corner reciting poetry to be heard and spread in the same way their maestro, Jorge Brandon, did it.  I’m hoping that’s the way I’m doing it, too.

Also in this issue, look out for poems by Barbara Jane Reyes, Marie Elizabeth-Mali, Denise Duhamel, among some other amazing writers and artists.

The print version will be available soon but for now you can view it at issuu.com or browse through the embedded image below.

August Readin’


SPD Buck-a-Book Goodies
Originally uploaded by OBermeo

With all the work I’ve been doing this last month, I’m really surprised I got any reading done at all.  And, much to my personal surprise, I got some first drafts done, read twice, attended a good number of readings, wrote an online review, scored more reading material at SPD’s Buck-a-Book sale, and re-enrolled into a new poetry class to continue the path to getting a degree in Creative Writing.

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